Abstract
With a brain the size of a pinhead, insects perform fantastic navigational feats. They avoid obstacles and move through small openings. How do they do this, with their limited brain power? Understanding the inner workings of an insect’s brain can help us in our search towards energy-efficient computing, physicist Elisabetta Chicca of the University of Groningen demonstrates with her most recent result: a robot that acts like an insect. It’s not easy to make use of the images that come in through your eyes, when deciding what your feet or wings should do. A key aspect here is the apparent motion of things as you move. ‘Like when you’re on a train’, Chicca explains. ‘The trees nearby appear to move faster than the houses far away. Insects use this information to infer how far away things are. This works well when moving in a straight line, but reality is not that simple. Moving in curves makes the problem too complex for insects. To keep things manageable for their limited brainpower, they adjust their behaviour: they fly in a straight line, make a turn, then make another straight line. Chicca explains: ‘What we learn from this is: if you don’t have enough resources, you can simplify the problem with your behaviour.’
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